Just when it seemed as if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had finally found sanity when a committee voted to kill the long-proposed but never-funded east-west route, along comes the full board last week to delay the inevitable.

Two entertainment industry tax-reduction proposals, both part of a package originally intended to help lure DreamWorks SKG to build its headquarters at the Playa Vista site near Marina del Rey, are working their way toward the L.A. City Council.

Vehicle Information Network, the Westlake Village-based operator of 1-800-CAR-SEARCH, has laid off its entire staff and shut down its core service of telephone-based classified advertising for used cars.

Regarding the "Where was the mayor?" item in your Between the Lines column of Jan. 20: Invitations to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce's 1997 Inaugural Ball were mailed to city, county and state officials including Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. R

One of the major themes in our recent "25 Ways To Make L.A. Grow" edition was the need to enhance the city's image especially among Corporate America, where Los Angeles is consistently viewed as a nasty place to do business.

William J.P. Smith Jr. has been appointed senior vice president and director of public relations at Ahlman & Associates. Smith, who most recently spent three years as a professor at Emerson College in Boston and Los Angeles, will be responsible for strate

Henry Cisneros, the outgoing secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, landed a job last week as president and chief operating officer with Los Angeles-based Univision Communications Inc.

Easton Co., a Van Nuys-based sporting goods manufacturer and the nation's No. 1 producer of aluminum bats, stands to lose an estimated $50 million in sales over the next two years if the National Collegiate Athletic Association goes forward with its plan

Putting an end to months of political bickering over the future of the Eastside subway extension, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last week awarded a $65 million contract to supervise the digging.

In 1959, General Mills Inc. paid a fledgling animation company called Jay Ward Productions Inc. $8,000 per episode to deliver a television cartoon about a brainless moose, his flying rodent companion, and a brilliant dog who travels through time with his

You might try mediation as a way of getting some money back. Mediation is an alternative to a lawsuit (your ultimate recourse in a dispute with a planner) or to arbitration (mandatory in disputes with brokers).

More than 6 million square feet of office space currently sits empty in downtown Los Angeles. Many perceive the area to be an unappealing place to visit much less locate a business. Despite such perceptions, the area has seen a slight improvement in off

Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude once had visions of a complete makeover for the Van Nuys Civic Center, including a civic auditorium, movie theaters, a mix of new offices and retail development even a gateway bell tower.

Last week's decision by Guess Inc. to shift most of its manufacturing from Los Angeles to Mexico could hardly be considered good news. But perhaps it will have the indirect benefit of focusing more attention on this critical and little understood comp

The date of Feb. 24, 1997 carries special significance for attorneys Doreen Blauschild of Southern California Federal Savings and Loan and Dennis Winston, who represents the now-defunct Western Federal Savings and Loan.

All over Los Angeles this Sunday thousands of people, many of whom don't know a field goal from a Field poll, will gather around their television sets for America's favorite annual grudge match: Bud vs. Bud Light.

L.A.'s biomed industry is made up of 500 to 700 companies employing better than 24,000 people. It has received more research grants from the National Institutes of Health than any other metropolitan area in the nation. Its businesses produce everything fr

Sports junkies eager to tune into Fox Television's new regional sports channel when it debuts next week will be disappointed if they subscribe to one of Southern California's two biggest cable operators.

Northrop Grumman Corp. announced last week that it will shutter its plant in Hawthorne, along with three other defense-oriented facilities around the country, cutting 755 jobs 530 of them in Hawthorne.

John Giurni has been promoted to vice president of The Blaze Co. Giurni, who was previously a senior account supervisor at the company, will continue to supervise consumer product and service accounts, including accounts for the Beverly Center, The Gym, R

So vast is the explosion of material available on the Internet's World Wide Web that the future of Internet software may belong to the programs which can best retrieve, sort and present information in the way individual users want.

The folks who bring you those not-so-adorable misfits Beavis and Butthead Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks animation group are the latest animation business bound for beautiful downtown Burbank, sources have told the Business Journal.

Elite Manufacturing just ended the most profitable of its five years in business. Sales were doubling yearly and the company was expanding rapidly. But one employee's behavior ground Elite's progress to a halt.

USC's business school has struggled for decades to win national recognition, but last week it scored an undeniable coup a $35 million endowment from electronics tycoon Gordon S. Marshall, the largest donation ever to a business school.

The number of investment teams vying to finance development of the 1,000-plus-acre Playa Vista community near Marina del Rey has been whittled to a half-dozen, and a top candidate should be selected by the end of the month, according to Playa Vista managi

Angelenos have had to weather some serious downpours over the last few weeks, subjecting daily commuters to pothole jolts, traffic tie-ups, fender-benders, and more. Productivity can be affected as a result, with workers arriving late to work, exhausted a

UCLA officials have presented to the University of California Board of Regents a plan to build $1.1 billion worth of new and reconstructed medical facilities at the school's Westwood and Santa Monica facilities.

In a move reflecting the continued financial strains faced by many local commercial property landlords, the owners of the 967,000-square-foot Wilshire Courtyard office complex in the Miracle Mile District have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The experience can be an eye-opener for any company that has not measured customer service recently. In an era of aggressive competition, customer service is more than a buzzword, it's a strategy ... and an imperative.

A series of bitter waterfront labor disputes is wreaking havoc with the movement of cargo at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, costing shipping lines millions of dollars and casting a shadow over the port complex's future.

Peter O'Malley's announcement that he will sell the Los Angeles Dodgers surprised and saddened many Angelenos. Sale of the Dodgers, which was the last major league baseball team wholly owned by a single family, marks the end of an era not only in the spor

In a surprise move that could lower thousands of homeowners' monthly mortgage payments this year, the nation's largest investor in home loans wants to require automatic cancellation of mortgage insurance coverage when borrowers build up substantial equity

Talk about your big league financings: James T. Sington, investment banker and managing director over at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette's Century City offices, last month successfully engineered a combined $814 million pair of underwritings for the Palm Des

Why is the California Country Club Homes Association of Cheviot Hills, Track No. 7260, interfering with the plan to construct at 38-story highrise building on Constellation Boulevard? ("Residents fight Century City high-rise plan," Dec. 9).

A coalition of community groups has launched a campaign to delay Glendale Federal Bank's pending acquisition of TransWorld Bank, in a bid to draw attention to Glenfed's poor record of lending to minorities and low-income families.

The Los Angeles Dodgers may not make much money now, but experts say a new owner could supercharge revenues with the addition of luxury boxes, a boosted cable television contract and more aggressive onsite retailing.